In answer to this question:
I heard the architect last night [at the meeting about the Western Middle School] say that the most important safety issue is separating the parent drop off zone from the bus zone. What about the Ordean site?
One of our experts replied:
At Ordean they label their bus drop off with a turn around a dead end because it’s intended primarily for buses, although it also feeds the parking lots immediately to the west of the school and the larger parking lot which will cover the new football field. Some parent cars will come into this dead end drive, but most parents will do what they’ve always done. Rather than get clogged up with all that dead end traffic they will pick students up and drop them off on 40th Ave East…which is also a thru traffic killer as drivers head back the way they came or turn into Gilliat or Luverne Street to return to Superior Street at 41st or 42nd. That’s how cars have ended up in Ordean front yards in the past and that was before texting while driving.
That dead end drop off for busses and the drop off along 40th are both killer circulation plans–tho one could claim, as the architects apparently do, that they are somewhat separated. That doesn’t cut it. Busses should be totally separated from the students, parents and staff arriving by car. The Ordean plan is a safety nightmare.
Imagine 24 busses and 100 cars entering that dead end and turning at the small circle near the rail road track dropping off, picking up, and waiting their turn to get back onto Superior Street a few hundred feet from the busy light at 40th and Superior Street.
It’s impossible. It’s hazardous, and it’s all a direct result of not having a large enough site. The first student killed there will prompt the school board to abandon its promise not to use eminent domain.
